Issa Rae is done up like a star, which makes sense because that’s what she is. The 31-year-old plays the lead in the new HBO series “Insecure,” premiering Oct. 9, but she also created and co-wrote the damn thing, so this is sort of her moment.
At the show’s premiere in the Chicago Cultural Center, there are reporters, cameras and a literal red carpet rolled out for Rae. She’s dressed accordingly in a striking green dress, and at first it’s hard to imagine this woman became famous for a web series called “The Misadventures of an Awkward Black Girl.” But then you see that instead of the requisite pair of heels, she’s rocking a pair of black Converse, and you realize the awkward is probably still in there somewhere.
The journey from “Awkward” to “Insecure” wasn’t quick or easy. The success of the web series led her to pitch an idea called “I Hate L.A. Dudes” to Shonda Rhimes in 2012, but then the pilot didn’t get picked up. Rae has said that she felt like she lost her creative voice in that process by trying to please so many different people—a mistake she didn’t want to repeat with “Insecure.”
“Any time where I’m not certain of the story that I’m telling,” Rae said of when she has to take a step back. “Any time you ask me a question about a particular character and I can’t answer it, or any time you ask me plot-wise where something is going and I’m not certain in the world that I’m trying to build, I will always have to have conversations with myself where I can acknowledge [that]. So you’re talking to yourself a lot.”
Not that talking to herself is something new for Rae. “Awkward Black Girl” was narrated by the internal monologues of her alter ego, and “Insecure” shares plenty of DNA with the web series. Her character, also named Issa, says her co-workers treat her like the token black person with all the answers. She tells them she doesn’t know when they ask her what “on fleek” means. “I know what that shit means,” she says in voiceover. “But being aggressively passive is what I do best.”
The concept behind both “Awkward Black Girl” and “Insecure” was that black women are often cast in roles that are sassy, motherly or angry, but are rarely cast as quirky or awkward. Rae has been clear from the start that “Insecure” is not a show meant to speak for all black women—it’s specific to one black woman’s experience.
“Too often, when there’s just one voice or a singular voice, people expect that of you,” Rae said. “And I’m so used to it that I have to state it upfront. But I feel like at this point, I think people know. I’d like to believe that.”
But we may be coming to a point where voices like Rae’s aren’t singular. With shows like “Insecure” and Donald Glover’s “Atlanta” premiering, and coming off an Emmys that felt noticeably more diverse than the Oscars, TV is taking steps to become a less homogenous landscape.
“I feel like there are so many platforms in television, and film really only has one medium for the most part,” Rae said. “But people like to be immersed in a world, and television allows for that. There are just way more budgets and platforms allowing people to tell diverse stories, so they’re more ahead of the curve.”
Of course, as a show about 20-something women on HBO, “Insecure” has been frequently and lazily linked to Lena Dunham’s “Girls”—a comparison that Rae said is largely unfair.
“I think the only similarity is that we’re young women on HBO. But I think it’s a very different tone, it’s a different brand of comedy,” she said. “If anything, I think there’s a feeling of restlessness that both lead characters have, but they couldn’t be more different.”
Though both shows do center on women trying to figure it out and boast brands of “authenticity,” “Insecure” feels more quietly real. “Girls” made a name for itself by embracing the atrocities of its Millennial characters, becoming almost a satire of a generation, but “Insecure” feels far less aggressive. Certainly, the character Issa makes mistakes in the pilot, but they’re the fumblings of someone who is lost rather than a person clinging to the inside of a privileged bubble.
One of the most memorable scenes of “Insecure’s” first episode involves Issa getting ready to go out. She tries on different shades of lipstick and alters her persona based on each color, talking to herself in the bathroom mirror. Red is sexy, pink ditzy, black hostile. Purple is British for some reason. In the end, Issa wipes the makeup off and smears on some clear lip balm.
“I’ve definitely been guilty of [trying] to make myself desirable based on what the beauty standards are and second-guess my own beauty standards, and it gets kind of tricky in that way,” Rae said. “But I think lots of women are guilty of it, but I’ve now reached a point where I kind of don’t care.”
Hence the Converse.
@lchval | laurenchval@redeyechicago.com
